Everton set to face Alex Ferguson's empire

THE glare, the shrug of the shoulders and the growled response – Louis van Gaal’s verdict on AZ’s defeat to Everton was scarily similar to sitting in with Govan’s footballing knight on a rare off night.

THE glare, the shrug of the shoulders and the growled response – Louis van Gaal’s verdict on AZ’s defeat to Everton was scarily similar to sitting in with Govan’s footballing knight on a rare off night.

As someone who has tasted great success in his illustrious career, van Gaal, like Sir Alex Ferguson, is a particularly bad loser.

Severely irked by his team’s Uefa Cup elimination and the surrender of the longest-standing unbeaten home record in European football, the former Ajax and Barcelona coach made a series of excuses why his current side were beaten on Thursday without ever crediting the sheer fact that Everton’s fringe players with nothing to play for were better than his own stars who were looking to qualify.

Strikes from Andrew Johnson and James Vaughan plus a diving header from Phil Jagielka weren’t even “goals” in sour-faced van Gaal’s book who described the three efforts as “comedy capers”.

The truth was that these determined efforts were far less funny than van Gaal’s assessment of the game which he laughingly claimed they dominated.

They say that this kind of spiteful attitude towards defeat is the mark of real winners but after putting one over on van Gaal, David Moyes now has the chance to overcome a second European Cup-winning manager in four days as his Everton side visit Manchester United tomorrow.

Although Everton are unbeaten in their last 13 matches, which is longer than any other current run by a Premier League club, Moyes knows that he is coming up against a club who have learned to win over years rather than weeks tomorrow.

When Everton last won at Old Trafford in August 1992, the Premier League’s first season, they had won nine league titles to United’s seven.

Fast forward 15 years and Ferguson’s Red Devils have been champions on a further nine occasions to now total 16.

Everton in contrast haven’t come close to adding to their haul and have not recorded an away win at Old Trafford in that period either.

Coming up against such a well-oiled winning machine, Moyes acknowledges this challenge is far from being a personal duel across the dugouts at against fellow Glaswegian Ferguson.

He said: “It’s a different scenario against Sir Alex.

“It’s very difficult to beat them because of the quality of their side.

“Their football club has got a great tradition and to overcome Manchester United I don’t think it’s just overcoming Sir Alex it’s overcoming the team and the club. We have to go there and beat everybody.

“At the moment I think it will be tight between them and Arsenal for the Premier League title, but they’re champions.

“We were a bit disappointed not to take something out of the game at Goodison in September.

“There weren’t an awful lot of chances in the game so we have to see if we can try and gain something from this.”

The mark of a championship-winning team is one who can grind out victories at all costs whether they’re playing well or not.

It’s something that United have mastered in recent seasons – take last season’s success at Goodison for example when they recovered from being 2-0 down to triumph 4-2.

Across Stanley Park, Liverpool supporters continue to grumble about United’s wins over them in games that Rafael Benitez’s side have supposedly dominated, but the regularity of these positive results for Ferguson suggests there’s much more than good fortune to thank.

While they’ve actually been playing plenty of impressive football throughout their current unbeaten run, Everton have managed to acquire some of this ability to win at all costs.

Moyes said: “We’ve had periods in games when we’ve played really well and had periods when we’ve had to hang in but overall we’ve found ways of getting results which is important.

“I think we’ve played well and we’ve always looked a threat – like we can score goals so that’s been pleasing.

“You can see from the amount of goals we’re scoring, we look like we’ve got goals in us.

“It’s important that we’re never out of the game and you always give yourself a realistic chance.

“That’s not just been the 11, it’s also been the players coming off the bench to change games for us and long may that continue.”

While Everton’s current run is the result of a great team effort, tomorrow they face one of their former great individual talents in the shape of Wayne Rooney.

With Rooney long having burnt his bridges with his boyhood club, Moyes has been able to build a new, more consistent side, without him.

Having already qualified for the Uefa Cup last 32 as group winners, Everton were able to blood some of their current crop of youngsters.

Like Rooney, Jack Rodwell has made the step up into Everton’s first team at the tender age of 16 having made his senior bow as a substitute against AZ.

Although the Birkdale-born youngster, who became the club’s youngest ever player in a European match, Phil Jagielka is predicting a bright future for Everton’s starlets, saying: “Jack Rodwell is going to be a fantastic talent as long as he keeps his feet grounded – he’s got a lot of ability.

“Bjarni (Vidarsson) is a nice little tidy player and Vaughany speaks for himself. As soon as we put him on we knew we had a massive threat and him and his best mate Victor hooked up and it was a nice little goal.”

One of the big names sure to be recalled to the Everton team sheet at Old Trafford is Mikel Arteta, with the midfielder relishing the chance to face United’s own brilliant Iberian Cristiano Ronaldo.

Arteta said: “I love him. I think he’s brilliant. The way he has developed his game over the past two years in unbelievable.

“I think that he’s the kind of player that always wants to do something different and that’s really good.”

Arteta is also relishing the opportunity to test himself against the champions, adding: “Old Trafford is my favourite ground away from home and they are always really hard games, and some time not as nice to play because obviously they keep the ball and they put you in trouble a lot of the time.”